


The Sun is Burning Down

by Branithar



Category: 5 Seconds of Summer (Band)
Genre: (only a little bit though), Age Difference, Demons, Hell, M/M, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-29
Updated: 2020-06-30
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:08:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24978172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Branithar/pseuds/Branithar
Summary: When Luke was 23, he wandered into Hell. Unable to find a way out, he got a job and an apartment and accepted his fate. Although it seems to him like almost no time has passed since then, to Ashton, his old boyfriend, it's been seven years since he disappeared without a trace.
Relationships: Luke Hemmings/Ashton Irwin, Michael Clifford/Calum Hood
Comments: 2
Kudos: 12





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Rating subject to change as I write.
> 
> Title is from Los Angeles by Sugarcult.

“Smoke?” a demon, Igthuud, offered Luke as it pulled out cigarettes for itself and the others. 

Luke shook his head. “I’m good.” 

“Square,” Calum, the only other human in the group, commented as he accepted one and let Igthuud light it for him. 

“They cause cancer,” Luke defended. 

“Bullshit.” 

“They _do._ How can you not know that?” 

“I swear to Satan you guys talk about this every time you come here for smoko,” Akoth growled irritably as it lit its own cigarette, “Go somewhere else if you’re gonna complain.” 

“Even when he makes shit up about smokes, Luke’s less of a drag than you are,” Calum told it, “Maybe _you_ need new smoking buddies.” 

“You’re the outsider here, human,” Akoth hissed. 

Calum blew a cloud into the cold air. “Bite me.” 

Akoth leered and stretched its neck to get in Calum’s face. “Yurkollok won’t protect you forever.” 

Calum eyed it for a moment before amicably patting its face. “Don’t be such a square, bro. We’re cool.” 

Akoth retracted with a hiss, taking another drag from its cigarette. 

“You guys with Yurkollok?” a strangely familiar voice inquired. 

Luke looked at the newcomer approaching them, a well-dressed human with slicked back black hair and just enough scruff to call it a beard. Someone gave an affirmation, but Luke couldn’t tear his eyes away from the human as he returned his gaze, recognition and shock washing over his handsome features. Even if Luke couldn’t quite place him, the human _definitely_ seemed to know him, lips parting as he stared back at Luke. 

“What do you want?” Akoth demanded. 

The human looked at it. “I’m here with a contract.” 

Akoth stamped its cigarette out on the pavement and went to the door. “Follow me.” 

The human gave Luke one last, long look before stepping into the restaurant after Akoth, the door swinging shut behind them. 

“Has he been here before?” Luke asked. "That human?"

Igthuud belched. “Never seen him around before. Maybe he’s a new courier.” 

Calum put his cigarette out on the wall. “We should get back to work.” 

Luke couldn’t take his mind off the human as he left Calum and the others to it and made his way back to the street he was on for today. A damned soul nervously handed him his gloves as he stepped into the trolley with it and started turning the crank to lift them into the air. 

The damned soul curled up in the corner and wailed as they rose, just as it did every shift. As if being worked to the bone every day for eternity wasn’t enough, it had been given a job that forced it to face its terror of heights as well. 

“Pass me that?” Luke asked when they were almost at the top of the building, pointing to the mop beside the soul. 

Whimpering, it handed it to him and shakily got to its feet. As they cleaned the windows of the building, Luke wondered about the damned souls inside, wondered what they did all day to pay for the sins they’d committed in life. As far as he could see, they were just working at desks, the torture not as apparent as it was for the soul cleaning with him. 

By the end of their shift, Luke had come to no solid conclusion, though he did feel like he’d wondered about it countless times before with the same result. 

Ernon, Luke’s supervisor, handed him his meal tokens as the damned soul trembled beside him. Luke didn’t know what damned souls ate, if they ate anything at all, or even if they got paid for their work. Maybe that was part of their torture. Endless work for nothing. 

Luke shared his apartment with Calum and Michael, another human. As the approaching sun lit up the sky, Luke caught Michael making his way home too. 

“How was work?” Luke asked. 

“Work…” Michael stared at him for a moment before seeming to realise what he was talking about. “Yeah, it was fine.” 

“You okay?” 

“Zoned out, I guess.” 

Luke nodded as he unlocked the door. “I know what you mean.” 

“You ever wonder why we’re doing this?” Michael asked suddenly. 

“Doing what?” 

Michael gestured vaguely. “ _Working._ Living here.”

Luke frowned and waited for him to explain what he meant. 

“I just…I feel like there was a reason, but it’s been so long that I forgot what it was. How long have we been here?”

Luke opened his mouth to say they’d _always_ been here, but shut it when he thought for a moment. _Had_ they always been here? Just like when he saw the human earlier, Luke was struck by the feeling that there was something he’d forgotten right on the edge of his thoughts. 

“Have we had this conversation before?” Michael asked, looking like he was pleading for an answer a different question, a question that Luke felt like he was asking too, even if he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. 

Before Luke could reply, they heard a key in the lock and turned to see Calum walking in with two bags of leftover food from the restaurant. 

“What’s up?” Calum asked, not really looking at either of them as he went to the coffee table to set the bags down. 

Luke and Michael joined him and they split the food between them, finding comfort in the routine. 

“That human’s looking for you,” Calum told Luke, “Irwin. The courier.” 

“Irwin?” Like everything else about the man, something about his name felt achingly familiar and it seemed like the answer to the question of his identity was just behind a thin curtain Luke couldn’t quite reach to open. “What does he want?” 

Calum shrugged. “He found me after him and Yurkollok were done and asked about you.” 

“What did you tell him?” 

“Told him you don’t work there and I didn’t know where he could find you.”

Luke frowned. “You could’ve told him to wait here for me, or something.” 

“C’mon, I’m not gonna tell a stranger where you sleep.” 

Luke huffed. The fact that the stranger, Irwin, was apparently looking for him only made him more curious about him. He couldn’t for the life of him figure out where he knew him from, but it felt like the answer was right on the tip of his tongue, like there was a single string he could pull to make it all unravel, if only he could figure out what it was.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was gonna post this tomorrow but someone posted a nice comment so here it is right now immediately.

Luke was working on the windows of a church today. To some, it might seem weird for there to be churches in Hell, but the truth was demons loved them. They loved Catholicism, they loved irony and they loved humans doing terrible things out of a misplaced sense of righteousness, fully believing that their God would welcome them to Heaven for their cruelty when they died. They were probably some of the church’s biggest fans. 

Luke couldn’t see very well through the colourful glass panels, but he’d been inside a few times and knew the pews would be packed with damned souls, wailing and praying for…forgiveness? Deliverance? He didn’t really know; he didn’t like talking to damned souls, so all he knew about them was what demons told him and what he gathered when he had to work with them. They weren’t very talkative anyway. 

“Luke!” Ernon called from the pavement below. 

“Yeah?” Luke called back, wondering what he wanted. Ernon didn’t speak to him during shifts unless he was doing something wrong. 

“Someone wants you at The Pyre when you’re done here.” 

Luke frowned. That was the club Michael worked at. “Okay! Thanks!” He looked at the damned soul still scrubbing at the window beside him. “Hope I’m not in trouble,” he joked. 

The soul just looked at its blistering hands and whimpered. 

It was weird that Michael would ask him to come to The Pyre. They shared an apartment, so it wasn’t like they ever struggled to find opportunities to talk outside of work hours. Maybe it was something urgent, something that couldn’t wait. 

When Luke reached the club, it became clear that it wasn’t Michael that invited him. Michael would have met him outside, not have the bouncer at the door direct him inside. Luke became nervous as he made his way in, wondering if he’d done something to catch the attention of some high profile demon. 

The Pyre wasn’t unlike other clubs Luke had been to, aside from the occasional damned soul curled up in a corner, crying and trying to block out the lights and noise with its hands, though they were kind of a sight to be expected in any respectable establishment in Hell. Luke’s eyes fell on the only human in the room, the man he’d seen yesterday and completely forgot about until now. Irwin seemed to sense his gaze and looked up at him, something unreadable in his expectant eyes. 

Luke made his way to his table, guessing that it was he who invited Luke here. 

“Luke?” Irwin asked as Luke sat. 

“Yeah.” 

He let out a shaky breath, eyes seemingly examining every inch of Luke’s face. “You’re alive.” 

Luke gave him a weird look. “Yeah?” 

“When you disappeared, I thought…fuck, I didn’t know _what_ to think.” 

“Disappeared?” 

Irwin eyed him carefully, as if considering the best way to phrase what he wanted to say. “Seven years ago. I guess you’ve been here the whole time, but to us it was like you…stopped existing. We tried to find you, but there was nothing.” 

“Who are you?” 

Irwin looked sad. “It’s me. Ashton.” 

“Ashton.” Luke’s jaw dropped as memories flooded his mind. “ _Ashton._ ” His boyfriend of four years, Ashton Irwin. Luke looked at him with new eyes, wondering how he hadn’t recognised him sooner. His face was more lined than it used to be and the beard and black hair were new, but it was undeniably _him._ “What happened?” 

“You’ve been here, in Hell, for seven years,” Ashton said again slowly, “Fuck, you haven’t aged a day since then, have you?” 

“Seven _years?_ ” That couldn’t be true. Luke couldn’t have been here for more than _maybe_ a few months. 

“Time is weird here,” Ashton told him, “If you don’t count the days, you lose track. A lot of people get stuck here like that.” 

“How old are you now?” Luke asked softly. 

“Thirty two.” 

“Thirty two,” Luke repeated. He’d been twenty five before…

Luke sat back. Before he came here. He remembered now, remembered the life he’d had on Earth, the people he’d known, the years he’d had with Ashton. It felt like it had all happened a few weeks ago, but he could see the years in Ashton’s face. The years he’d missed. 

Luke hunched over and looked at the table. “You’re thirty two?” he asked softly. _Seven years._ Ashton _had_ to have moved on in that time, found someone new, someone closer to his age and maturity. Maybe he even had kids now. The thought made Luke want to cry, so he didn’t ask. He’d missed so much. 

“I’m gonna get you out of here,” Ashton told him. Seven years ago, he would have reached out to hold Luke’s hand and Luke would have held it back and been comforted. Now, Ashton kept his hands to himself and Luke held back tears. “I have to go back in the morning, but I’ll come back and get you out.”

Luke looked at him in alarm. “Don’t go,” he begged. 

“I have to.” Ashton pulled the sleeve of his leather jacket down a little to show Luke his wrist, where four lines were drawn. “I mark one every day I’m here. On the day I draw on the fifth, I have to leave. So I don’t lose track of time and get trapped here.” 

Luke stared at the four marks. “When will you come back?”

“As soon as I can,” he promised, “I’m not leaving you here again.” 

“What about Michael and Calum? I can’t just leave them, they’ve gotta have people who miss them too.” 

Ashton hesitated. “I’ll see what I can do. It might take longer, I have to get talismans for you all.” 

Luke frowned deeply but nodded. 

“Can I get you a drink?” 

The last time anyone had offered him alcohol was when some demons had wanted to see if they could get him drunk enough to torture souls and he’d thrown up, partially from inebriation and partially from being forced to watch souls get dismembered and put back together over and over. He trusted Ashton a lot more than he trusted his demon friends, though. 

“Have you seen my parents?” Luke asked as he sipped his drink, a glass of beer that tasted nothing like any beer he’d had on Earth. 

Ashton stared at his own drink. “Not in a while. We lost touch after…” 

Luke hunched over a little. “I’m sorry.” 

“Hey, no.” Ashton finally seemed about to reach for Luke’s hand, but stopped and let his hand fall to the table. “It’s not your fault, it happens to a lot of people. At least I've found you now.” 

“What did you think happened?” 

Ashton withdrew his hand and fidgeted with one of his rings. When did he start wearing rings? Luke noted that his ring fingers were bare and didn’t know if he should feel relieved or sad. 

“I didn’t know,” Ashton told him, “You just…didn’t come home one night and I thought maybe you were staying at a friend’s, then that something happened and you were in a hospital somewhere, then I just…” He heaved a breath. “I wanted to think that you’d just left. Cut us all off and gone somewhere ‘cause you needed space or something, even though I knew you would never do that. I just kept hoping you’d come back. Then I-” Ashton looked away for a moment. “I didn’t want you to be dead, but I wanted your body to be found just so I could finally know where you were. It killed me to not know.” 

Luke blinked back tears as he wondered how condensed that version of events was, how long Ashton had agonised over him while he fucked around in Hell and forgot about him. 

The next question on Luke’s tongue was when Ashton finally moved on, but he didn’t want to hear the answer. What if he found someone new after only a year? What if he’d cried over Luke for six and only just found it within himself to get his love life back? Nothing Ashton could say wouldn’t hurt. 

“How are you here?” was what he settled on. 

Ashton shrugged. “I guess I started hanging out with a weird crowd. All that spiritualism attracted people who thought I’d be a good fit for Hell work. I liked to think I was open minded back then, but I still had a hard time believing it all before someone brought me here for the first time. I’ve been taking jobs ever since.”

Luke nodded, thinking back to the first time he wandered into Hell. He hadn’t even realised anything was wrong at first, he’d just taken a wrong turn and then the sun had set and he found himself surrounded by monsters. Ernon had given him a job so no one would eat him and since then he’d found that Hell wasn’t all that different to Los Angeles. It was weird to think that all this existed around the mortal world, parallel to it. 

Ashton laughed suddenly and shook his head, familiar dimples flashing for a moment. “Still doesn’t feel real, you being here. I really thought I was never gonna see you alive again.” 

“Sorry.” 

“No, it’s okay, I…I haven’t completely figured out how to feel, but I’m happy to be able to talk to you again. I missed it.” 

“Me too,” Luke told him, because he _had_ at first. He remembered crying over the idea of never seeing Ashton again when he first realised he was trapped here, before the days and years melded together and he forgot who he was. 

He missed other things too, like his kiss, his gentle words, his touch. Things he wasn’t sure he could ask for anymore, because as desperately as he wanted things to go back to the way they were, he just didn’t know who he was to Ashton anymore. An ex? A tragic memory? He had no idea, so he just smiled and let Ashton buy him another drink, pretending he didn’t feel like he was about to fall apart.

**Author's Note:**

> I run tran5rightsos on Tumblr! Feel free to send asks about this or any of my other 5sos fics!
> 
> Comments are always welcome.


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